We Just Clicked – Sandra 19

[For back story go here: Story so far at 27 July 2020 and more recent Sandra episodes.]

[Relevant back story links also within text.]

Things were moving fast in the world of Together… Apart (a lot lot faster than a certain campervan she could see) and Sandra was trying hard to keep up. As predicted, Adrian reported that he had navigated the spiders’ web ties of the ransomware programme that had beset their app data. However, while freeing up the data he wasn’t convinced it hadn’t already been sent off to whoever wanted to use it against them. A data breach had still occurred, the only question was how bad were the perpetrators.

“I told you they were amateurs,” said Trinny. “Probably just a bunch of school kids with time on their hands and looking for a bigger challenge than building houses in Minecraft.”

Sandra was not entirely convinced by this but she went along with it all the same. They had sent out notifications that there may have been a data breach for their users but they were pretty certain it was emails only that would have been vulnerable, certainly no one would be seeing their bank balance attacked. They watched a number of users leave the platform, but with a few additional functions and updates added the issue was levelled satisfactorily. They still had enough pulling power to keep numbers impressive.

It was only when the link came through to Sandra’s personal account that she began to think the problem wasn’t over yet. When a second one came through she thought it was probably just the beginning of the problem and when she started getting bombarded with queries relating to links being sent by other users she knew they were now at the bottom end of a rather steep curve towards mayhem.

“What the hell is this?” she asked Trinny.

“Adrian’s checking it out,” said Trinny, “but don’t click on it.”

“I don’t intend to,” said Sandra, “Should we tell everyone else not to as well?”

“Well…” said Trinny, “They should be clever enough to know really… I’ll get the chatbot sorted and that can handle all the queries.”

“The chatbot doesn’t care,” observed Sandra, “about anything. It’ll just tell them to have a go and see.”

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t,” said Trinny. “I’ll put the fear of God into it.”

Sandra was sceptical that the chatbot wouldn’t just turn round and tell her that God was an unprovable Being and that there was no real data confirming or denying Their existence and therefore no reason for there to be any ‘fear’ attached to ‘God’ but she decided to just have another Frothy Choco-Coffee instead.

As she sipped it she hovered her mouse over the link that was no being sent out to all their hopeful date-finding users. How bad could it be? she thought. All her own malware protection was up to date, her computer automatically shut down if it even sense there was anything wrong, it was probably a dodgy website, click-bait at the worst. She could at least get a sense of what they were up against.

And so she clicked. 

Half an hour later, Together… Apart was trending wildly across social media. Users and non-users couldn’t believe what they were seeing. The media outlets were beginning to sniff around for the back story and user numbers were sky-rocketing. Here, they all argued was a new concept. In the face of the pandemic, targeting people who felt alone, uncertain what to do with themselves and in need of company, this app had sent everyone a link to videos and pictures of cute, lovable and very very funny kittens. It was the distraction everyone needed, the antidote to anxiety for the day. How, everyone asked, could an app company be so in tune with times as to flout every usual rule in the book and deliver the one thing everyone needed, but didn’t know they needed?

That evening Sandra phoned up Adrian to congratulate him on ensuring their users would be intrigued and engaged forever and she started drafting articles and reposes to capitalise on the feline show.

“They were amateurs,” he remarked.

“They were fantastic,” said Sandra.

As she hung up she received a text.

– What the hell is happening? it read.

She looked out her window in time to see the campervan towed away from its moorings, off and around the corner… 

Flint had found being a ‘heavy’ to be a varied job over the past three years. Different tasks were set for you, some easy, some hard, some legal and some… not so. One of his favourites, he decided, had being working out how to tow away a campervan without being able to access the handbrake inside the vehicle. As it happened his approach worked first time and was highly satisfying – especially for the distraught look on the guy’s face who was scrambling into the driver’s seat in his pyjamas.